Writer. Two small people. F*cked cancer. I like wine.

Fundamental starts with ‘fun’

Look at the big smile on my face! I’ve just had my first session with my new Health Creation Mentor, after starting work on the Health Creation Programme. This is such an amazing resource for anyone moving on from a health crisis, or who suspects that body, mind, and spirit are not functioning in a perfectly healthy way. I’ve mentioned how useful I’ve found the Cancer Lifeline Programme from the same organisation, Health Creation, and this is the next step.

The idea is that is during the course of six months you work through a beautiful, chunky file, packed with written information, CDs, and self-assessment exercises. Each month, you fill in a booklet and answer yes or no to 90 questions in four areas: Body (Food, Exercise, Detox), Mind (Stress, Relationships, Emotions), Spirit (Being true to yourself, Energy, Spiritual connection) and Environment (Your space, Your communities, and Natural World). You add up the scores to draw your ‘Picture of Health’ to show how you are feeling about various aspects of your total health. Then, either working alone or with the help of a monthly coaching call from a Health Creation Mentor, you set monthly goals that will move your scores gradually upwards.

This is totally up my street as:

a) I LOVE filling in forms. (The recent census was like Christmas, frankly, such is my passion for neat box-ticking. Yes, OK, very slightly OCD, possibly).

b) As I said last time, I really respond to this coaching approach where you start from where you are now, while recognising the impact of the past, then set goals and take action to move forward in a positive direction.

c) This is exactly the right amount of structured hand-holding to help me work out what I want the next phase of my long and healthy life to look like, and to take steps to make sure cancer gets the message that it is not welcome again Chez Pinchy, thank you very much.

Anyway, my mentor for the next six months of becoming a healthy person in all ways is the very lovely Kit Hammond Stapely . The moment you hear her voice, your shoulders drop and you relax. It’s like soft caramel, honestly. Our hour on the phone flew by. We talked about what I want to achieve over the course of the programme, unhealthy patterns and habits, and looked at my Picture of Health – which is like a very spiky star rather than the desired wheel, such is the variation between areas of my life which are really good (including Relationships), and areas which at the moment have a big red sticker saying ‘Equipment failure – engineer has been called’ (ie Emotions and Energy).

So now I have some health goals, including starting a daytime yoga class, cancelling my gym membership because it makes me droop whenever I think that I ‘should’ be going to the gym, walking to school twice a week to pick DD up when DS is at nursery, playing with the small people or chilling out with them in front of the telly for half an hour after school rather than rushing round doing laundry etc, and putting stuff that makes me happy and nurtures me before non-urgent and unimportant chores.

As Kit said: ‘Loving, nurturing and supporting ourselves is fundamental. And the nice thing about that word is that it starts with FUN’. She has prescribed a FUN family water fight over the coming weekend (a heatwave is predicted!). I’m going out with girlfriends this week to have FUN, and have booked a night away in Bristol with DH next weekend (where I went to uni) so we can relive a bit of our youth, sans kiddies, and start a new habit of having FUN together.

Right, off to get some vitamin D in my head via the medium of hanging washing on the line. I may sing loudly while I do it, I warn you. It’s all about fun, people, and I want you all to tell me what you’ve got lined up this week that is just for fun. Let’s get some more joy in our lives, starting right now!